"No disease; pure exhaustion, but that is quite enough," he said, coming out through the sliding door to the waiting girls. "She has been spurring herself on for months; the worn nerves can go no further. She must have complete rest and good nursing for a year, perhaps; certainly for a long time. Then I can promise that she will be perfectly restored. It is nothing serious, nothing to be alarmed about, I assure you."
The doctor bowed himself out, and Miss Bradbury attended him to the door.
Margery and Happie stood silently watching him go, each occupied with the same thought. Nothing serious? When the promise that their mother should be restored if she took the needed rest held the implication that she would never be well without it! And when there was no money but what she had earned, earned at the price of this breakdown! Nothing serious! Why, nothing could be more serious, as this beloved mother's young daughters realized with the hand of this, their first acquaintance with real sorrow, heavily gripping their hearts.
[CHAPTER IV]
AN ANGEL IN DISGUISE
"It's rather worse to be ill with nothing the matter than to be sensibly ill of a disease," said poor Mrs. Scollard speaking feebly, but with an attempt at her own cheerfulness.
She had been ill for three weeks, and had not improved perceptibly over her condition in the beginning. "Only a nervous collapse," the doctor repeated. It had been so long coming on that the recovery must be proportionately long. And how could she get better with the thought that when her strength had given out, the family income had ceased sitting like a vulture at her bedside? Small as was the rent of the "Patty-Pans," still it must be paid. A month was as long as she could be idle, yet that month was nearly past, and she was no better.
Margery, Bob and Happie for the first time realized what a vitally real thing money is, and vainly strove to find a way to take their mother's place as the bread-winners. They understood only too clearly that there was no chance for that dear mother to get well while she lay in the second Patty-Pan room with anxiety tearing at her heart-strings.
Ralph and Snigs and their fine mother were comforts in those black days, but it was on Miss Bradbury that the Scollards found themselves relying with hourly increasing appreciation of her strength. That remarkable woman had not suggested returning to her home, but nightly occupied the parlor couch in the Patty-Pans, and daily took charge of its sorrowful tenants. Delicacies such as Margery would not have dared to buy found their way to Mrs. Scollard, and Margery discovered when she went to market that there were no out-standing accounts such as she had been dreading with the neighboring tradesmen; Miss Keren-happuch paid as she went out of her own purse, which the Scollard girls had always believed to be not over-abounding.